When the song 1999 hit the world in 1982, it had a very different feeling. 1999 was still years away and Prince thought it would be the end of the world. If you grew up in the mid-20th century, you tended to think of 1999 as this distant time when we would have jetpacks and robot maids and all that stuff. Of course, the real world of 1999 was just a little different.
Today when we “party like it’s 1999” we mean retro — a little Britney Spears, a little Back Street Boys, that sort of thing. That’s not what the song meant, forty years ago.
1999 was almost a quarter-century ago. That fact alone is a little chilling, right? I mean, it couldn’t possibly be that long ago. But, when you look at the facts, the world was an incredibly different place. Take a look at these facts about 1999 which will prove my point.
When you think about the way you get through your day… isn’t it amazing how much of the stuff you rely on every day… just disappears if you party like it’s 1999. It gives you a new respect for all the modern things we have at our disposal. It also makes you scratch your head thinking about how we all got along without them.
No matter when in history you live, I have a feeling that you want to believe things were better when you were a kid. In a lot of ways, they probably were. But in a lot more important ways, such as the way we get information, the way we treat disease, and our understanding of each other, things just might be better now than they ever were.
The post THROWBACK THURSDAY: Party like it’s 1999 appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
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Today when we “party like it’s 1999” we mean retro — a little Britney Spears, a little Back Street Boys, that sort of thing. That’s not what the song meant, forty years ago.
A quarter century?
1999 was almost a quarter-century ago. That fact alone is a little chilling, right? I mean, it couldn’t possibly be that long ago. But, when you look at the facts, the world was an incredibly different place. Take a look at these facts about 1999 which will prove my point.
Way back in 1999:
- The majority of people didn’t go online every day.
- Most people who did go online surfed the web at roughly .056 megabit speed.
- 100 channels seemed very cool.
- Record something off TV? Use a VCR.
- You might have had a cell phone at that point. But, it made phone calls and little else. In 1999 people didn’t even have that snake game on Nokia phones
- The average screen size for a computer was 15-17″ and flat panels were rare.
- Less than 5% of the population had a phone with internet access.
- Touchscreens? No one had those.
- Research meant going to a library, since Wikipedia wouldn’t be founded for another two years.
- If you wanted 10,000 songs with you at all times, you needed a wheelbarrow full of CDs.
- Cameras needed film.
- Google was a small company owned by two guys who thought it was a waste of time and tried to sell it.
- IBM still made PCs and people still cared whether or not IBM still made PCs.
- Bluetooth technology was 1 year old and didn’t really work.
- Not a single Starbucks had free Wi-Fi. Neither did anyone else. Why? Because it hadn’t been invented.
- Kindle was just a word that people used when they started about starting a campfire.
- Practically no one knew what an “Elon” was and “Musk” was something stinky that animals made.
- Amazon.com was around, but it sold books and practically nothing else. It didn’t provide any web services at all.
- Chrome was something you put on cars, not computers or phones.
When you think about the way you get through your day… isn’t it amazing how much of the stuff you rely on every day… just disappears if you party like it’s 1999. It gives you a new respect for all the modern things we have at our disposal. It also makes you scratch your head thinking about how we all got along without them.
Was the 20th century really that much better?
No matter when in history you live, I have a feeling that you want to believe things were better when you were a kid. In a lot of ways, they probably were. But in a lot more important ways, such as the way we get information, the way we treat disease, and our understanding of each other, things just might be better now than they ever were.
The post THROWBACK THURSDAY: Party like it’s 1999 appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
Continue reading...
